hist.

"Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate," said Jack. "For
if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free; and it cannot be
denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."

"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad lot!
Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered! Poor souls,
my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are vile, odious,
insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly human--for what is
a man without a fetter?--and you cannot be too particular not to touch or
speak with them."

After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered on the
road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was the practice
of the children in that part.

It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods, and the
ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all the birds were
singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently, another song began; it
sounded like the singing of a person, only far more gay; at the same time
there was a beating on the earth. Jack put aside the leaves; and there
was a lad of his own village, leaping, and dancing and singing to himself
in a green dell; and on the grass beside him lay the dancer's iron.

"Oh!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"

"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.

"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack "why do you not fear the
thunderbolt"?

"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only told to
children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance for nights
together, and are none the worse."

This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he had no
mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and tended his ulcer
without complaint. But he loved the less to be deceived or to see others
cheated. He began to lie in wait for heathen travellers, at covert parts
of the road, and in the dusk of the day, so that he might speak with them
unseen; and these were greatly taken with their wayside questioner, and
told him things of weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no
command of Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a
sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was one like
Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be always told; for
when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He had three lives; but
the third smiting would